Tammie pulled out her phone to take notes, and I had a tablet when we sat down across from each other in the living room. My daughter stated, “Let’s get this all figured out tonight, because shore excursions filled up really fast before our last cruise.” I did remember. There had been some excursions that were fully booked by the time we looked at what we wanted to do!

I also remembered that we had managed to schedule shore excursions at each port of call. The things we saw and did were fun, but when our ship pulled out of dock, I wished that Tammie and I would have had time to visit the town built around the port. Also, the cost of all those shore excursions had doubled the cost of my cruise.

That night, Tammie and I agreed that the only excursion we really wanted to go on was the one that would show us where the story about Anne of Green Gables took place.

Three months before taking this cruise, I had had my right hip replaced. Walking suddenly felt good again. While aboard ship, I surprised myself by walking a few laps around the promenade deck with my daughter, Niki. Although walking was painless, I was out of shape. Our first port of call on Sunday morning was Portland, Maine. Tammie said, “The church where we will attend Mass is just a few blocks from the dock.” What I failed to remember or maybe didn’t realize was that the distance was all uphill! I wasn’t used to that type of energetic walking.

We stopped often and rested along the way. When we arrived at the church, we were told, “Because today is Corpus Christi, Mass will take place at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.” He pointed uphill and said, “It’s just a block or two up that street.”

In Halifax, we bought tickets for a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus. This line of ancient, double-decker buses had a set route through the city, stopping at several places of interest. By the time we finished going through the Halifax maritime museum, we only waited five minutes for another bus to roll up.